


Love and the Single Porcupine

by Kathar



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Animal Transformation, Getting Together, M/M, Ouija Boards, minor mission notes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-11
Updated: 2017-07-11
Packaged: 2018-11-30 16:40:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,489
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11467515
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kathar/pseuds/Kathar
Summary: Clint had been a porcupine for approximately the last 45 minutes, and he was already really tired of it.The hardest part of being a porcupine, as it turns out, is that you've really got to work on your communication skills. Especially if you want to finally get your man.





	Love and the Single Porcupine

**Author's Note:**

> With great thanks to [JHSC](http://archiveofourown.org/users/JHSC/pseuds/JHSC) for watching me inflict this story on myself, and for betaing the result, and to [faeleverte](http://archiveofourown.org/users/faeleverte/pseuds/faeleverte) and [Laura Kaye](http://archiveofourown.org/users/laurakaye/pseuds/Laura%20Kaye) for egging me on.
> 
> I'm not entirely sure how this happened, and it certainly went in directions I didn't expect.

“I… huh... eight… u… oh, fuck you too, Clint. It’s the best I could do on short notice. When we get back to town, we can hunt you up one of those communication boards and laser pointers. We can strap it to your head and you can pretend to be a cyborg.”

Clint glared at Natasha, who was bending over him, and nosed the planchette up the ouija board until it was hovering over NO, trying to ignore how his claws skittered against the board. Unfortunately, he moved too fast and his paws betrayed him, splaying out and bellyflopping him. His chin came down on the planchette, knocking it off the board and leaving him staring dazedly at the half-moon in the upper corner.

It was, he was sure, laughing at him.

So was Natasha. 

Clint glared at her, muttering to himself as he scrambled back to his feet. 

“You can’t look menacing like that, Clint, it just doesn’t work.”

Clint bristled in defense and muttered louder, beginning to sway. 

“Oh, don’t you dare,” Natasha shook her finger at him. “Those things don’t actually shoot, you know. If you so much as try to brush against me, I will leave you here. And last I heard, porcupines couldn’t operate motorcycles, so then where would you be?”

She had a point, Clint knew. And where he’d be would be exactly where he was, stuck in the middle of nowhere in the Catskills with the ruins of an old Victorian crumbling about him, scavenging for food among the detritus of what appeared to have been a co-ed high school goth sleepover, and being a porcupine. 

He’d been a porcupine for approximately the last 45 minutes, and was already really tired of it.

Grumbling, Clint backed away from Natasha and settled back down to smack idly at the planchette of the ouija board she’d found abandoned in a sheltered corner of the ruins. Its little feet made it awkward to nudge-- it was supposed to be moved by multiple hands and from above-- but after a few swats Clint got the hang of it. He might be a porcupine, but he was still Hawkeye, and he could hit his marks with any damn thing he wanted.

He batted the planchette with no real goal in mind-- down the board, then back up, over a bit, then over a bit more as he pawed at it, stopping short on the L. He realized what he’d done a moment too late.

Natasha sniggered.

“Phil will be back soon, I hope,” she said. “That is, if you’re asking instead of mooning over him.”

Clint sent the planchette rocketing back up to the NO and then over to the moon next to it, and muttered again. Natasha sniggered harder. Clint wasn’t sure what she was hearing-- to him, his vocalizations sounded appropriately threatening. But given the quality of her snickers, he had a horrible suspicion that to her he sounded…  _ cute _ . Oh god, he was probably squeaky.

“Mwereawrmurumble YAWP” he told her, and Natasha hid her face in her hands. 

She did bring up a good point-- even if she was completely and totally wrong about the mooning thing. He did want to know where the third member of Strike Team Delta had gotten to. It was a natural enough thing to worry about and in no way meant that he mooned over Phil Coulson. He  _ appreciated _ Phil Coulson, very sincerely. Phil Coulson was their friend, their  _ teammate _ , Phil Coulson was a badass Agent of SHIELD and a very handsome man, so there was just a whole lot to appreciate. You could spend an entire day appreciating Phil Coulson for his many fine qualities, no mooning about it.

Harumph.

Natasha snorted and pulled her phone out of her pocket, likely checking for messages. Clint hoped so, at any rate. He’d feel better once he knew that the remnants of the motorcycle club-cum-cult they’d infiltrated had been entirely rounded up. The three of them had gotten a little distracted when Clint had turned into a porcupine, and most of the cult had gotten away. SHIELD was supposedly on it, but Delta still planned on extracting themselves and Clint was in no condition to help them in a fight, seeing as he was currently only about thirty pounds-- and a rodent.

When she was done, Clint clicked claws on the ouija board until she looked up from her phone and over at him. He began batting the planchette back and forth, picking up speed on each pass. It was getting easier the more he practiced, but by the time he’d finished his question he had begun to wish for a forehead-mounted laser pointer after all.

“Where’s Phil gone?” Natasha repeated. Clint looked up at her, decided his neck was getting sore, and sat back up on his hind legs. He chirped confirmation. “Do you have any idea what you look like?” she asked, raising her phone.

Oh god. She was  _ filming him _ .

Clint chittered angrily at her and pointed down at the ouija board.

“Fine, fine,” she said. “Phil’s gone back to the cave to retrieve the artifacts from the ritual we interrupted. He thinks one of them did this to you. Then we’ll pack up and bring you and them back to SHIELD and see what we can do. I’ve got the labs on it; given the description they’re already working on possible alien origins. Don't worry, we'll get you back to yourself in no time.”

Clint nosed the planchette down the board until it was resting on GOOD.

The sooner they had him back in human form the better. He was probably too late to stop Natasha’s video-- which he was sure she’d sent for purely scientific purposes, because she might tease him but she wasn’t cruel-- from getting passed around every researcher at SHIELD with remotely the right clearance level. The last thing he needed was it, or any other word of this debacle, getting further than that. 

It would be like the Llama Incident all over again.

It had taken Phil a year and the single-handed takedown of an entire smuggling operation to live down the Llama Incident. 

“Hey,” said Phil the Ex-Llama Coulson at that moment, as stepped through the enormous hole in the wall and into the house. He was still dressed in the motorcycle leathers he’d worn during the op, and Clint quickly realized that viewing Phil Coulson’s jeans-and-chaps clad thighs from approximately knee height was even worse than from normal-human height. He squawked.

Phil looked down, and his face did a weird twisty thing. It was all right; Clint felt kind of weird and twisty about the whole ordeal as well.

“Agent Barton,” Phil said, “you sound like an angry squeaky toy.”

Clint chittered at him. 

“Yeah, I know, it’s no fun being an animal. Believe me, I know.” He threw down a rucksack that was bursting at the seams. “But think of it as a rite of passage; more than one high level SHIELD agent has gone through it. Agent Hand was a swan for a whole six weeks; it suited her, apparently. Awe-inspiring and aggressive. Can’t say Agent Hartley appreciated it, but they did start dating afterwards, so-- not that that was the point.”

Clint tilted his head when Phil ran down and let out an encouraging burble. Phil reached down, and Clint found himself stretching upward to be petted. When Phil stopped just short of his muzzle and reversed course, Clint tried not to droop noticeably. He wasn’t mooning, he  _ wasn’t _ . He just… he could use a little comfort at the moment. Phil was right: it wasn’t easy being an animal. They’d already stayed too long, looking out for him, and night was going to fall soon. He hated being a burden-- and he especially hated being a  _ prickly _ burden.

“We’ll get you back to the lab and get you out of this,” Phil reassured him. “Look at me, do I look like a camelid anymore? I think they’re right about the 084s, by the way,” he added, looking up at Natasha. “They’ve got that alien look to them.”

“What’s an alien look?” Natasha asked, standing up and brushing off her knees. Phil opened his mouth. “And this better not be the start of one of your jokes,” she said, pointing a warning finger at him.

Phil shut his mouth. 

Clint sniggered in appreciation-- or tried to. He knew what his nightmares were going to be from now on: trying to warn people of imminent threats and having only porcupine laughter come out. Although, maybe he could weaponize the cuteness; for supposedly high-level super spies, both Natasha and Phil were having a remarkably hard time not falling over laughing.

“Here,” Phil said when he finally recovered, “I brought your jacket, Clint. We’re going to need it for the trip back. The last thing Natasha or I need is a stomach full of needles while we ride.” He turned the leather cycle jacket around to show the inside, and Clint winced. The quilting was studded with quills.

But then, Clint defied anyone, even badass senior former llama agents, to not react a little defensively when they suddenly went from six feet down to three, and got enveloped in the clothing they used to be wearing.

“Ugh,” Natasha said, taking it from Phil, “it smells like cheese. Here, Clint, come on.” She tried to wrap it around him, and Clint shrank back, chattering hard. He had no desire to be rolled up like a cat being given its medicine, much less cuddled against either of their crotches for the ride back. 

He skittered over to the ouija board, and Phil eyed it with interest.

“Found it near some burnt-out candles and a broken bottle of ouzo,” Natasha explained. “Clint may not be an unquiet spirit, but I thought it would help.”

“It’s a better idea than that thought-reading device that R&D is always threatening to come up with,” Phil agreed. “That seems less than ideal.”

Clint had to agree. The last thing he needed was to accidentally voice any of the thoughts he’d been having about Phil in motorcycle chaps. Horny porcupine wasn’t a good look on anyone, and Phil had never once given an indication he welcomed Horny Clint thinking about his ass, much less the poky rodent version of him. He shook the thought from his head and began pushing the planchette around on the board.

When he finally sat back on his haunches, panting, Natasha nodded.

“Yes,” she said, “we could probably build you a nest in one of the panniers and you could stick your head out. But you’re going to have to hang on hard; we don't want you flying off.” 

Clint held up a claw and flexed. He could do hard.

“All right then,” Phil said, folding up the jacket and strapping it to the bottom of the rucksack, “let’s get going. Call me superstitious, but I don’t want to hang around in a haunted mansion after dark.”

\---

Clint knew he was squealing, possibly even screaming, but he didn’t much care. He wanted off the damn bike. He wanted to go curl up in a hole in a tree trunk and never come out. He also wanted to never let go of Phil, never stop feeling the wind in his whiskers. 

They hadn’t been able to fit him in a pannier after all; he kept unbalancing the load. So they’d strapped a duffel bag to the back seat of Phil’s bike and stuffed Clint in it. As Phil’d taken off, Clint had clawed his way upright enough that he could use his paws to grip the straps on the side of Phil’s leather jacket, and clung on tight. Natasha’d nearly tipped her bike over at the sight-- she really needed to get a handle on that laughter reflex or she was going to be the one with a ruined reputation at SHIELD, never mind the fact that Clint had orange buck teeth and a wriggly nose at the moment.

As they came roaring down the narrow dirt road, Clint started imagining himself in a Harley commercial. That thought cut off abruptly when Phil went stiff between his paws. He yelled something at Nat that Clint couldn’t hear, and then the bike was twisting, tilting, oh holy shit Phil was sending it into a controlled skid why would he do such an idiotic thing--

\-- Clint went flying.

As he tumbled tail over muzzle in the air, he saw Phil’s motorcycle crash into the makeshift barrier someone had erected just on the blind end of the curve in the road. Phil himself was rolling, already coming up to his knees and reaching for a weapon. Natasha had leapt the barricade with her bike, scattering leather-and-bandana-clad cultists, and was wheeling around. 

Then Clint hit the dirt, and all the air whuffed out of him. Porcupines fared no better than humans when flung from motorcycles, it seemed. He righted himself in time to see Natasha taking down three much larger men on the far side of the ruined roadblock, while a fourth leapt at Phil, knife in hand. Phil met him and they went down together. 

Clint took one look at the leather road armor of all the combatants and decided he wasn’t going to be much use at ground level. He headed for a tree.

Climbing a tree as a porcupine, he quickly realized, wasn’t much different from climbing one as a human. Claw in, heave away, and mutter under your breath. He moved fast, found a sturdy limb, and ran out as far as he could go without having it break beneath him. He now had a bird’s-eye view of the battle below, where Phil was just taking down his man. Unfortunately, there was another man behind Phil, that man had a tire iron poised to come down on Phil’s skull, and Phil had lost his helmet.

Nothing for it, then. Clint screamed and leapt from the tree, deliberately twisting himself in the air.

He landed tail-first on the cultist’s upturned face, and as he did he felt a weird sort of loosening sensation all along his back and spine. Clint flailed, struggling to turn, clawing at the guy’s shoulders. The guy was screaming, something about fucking and shit, and yeaaaaaargh, nothing very original. Clint kept rubbing his back and sides wherever he could get them to stick. Just as he was yanked away, he got a good view of the guy’s face.

The guy’d had a big, bushy beard, one that came down as far as his sternum. It, and his entire face, were now covered in quills. Then Clint was flying through the air again. He came down hard, straight into some bushes, and gave up trying to get up in favor of just breathing through the pain.

\---

“Clint?” Phil’s voice sounded thin to Clint’s porcupine ears, wavering, almost like Phil was scared or something. “Clint?” 

He was a ways away, Clint decided. Too far for Clint’s little rodent mutterings to reach him. A scream might, but there was something in Phil’s voice that stopped him from trying it. 

Clint tried to roll over. He tried hard. After a desperate struggle that suggested he was going to at least have bruising all over his torso, Clint gave up. He was tangled in the lowest branches of something he thought was probably mountain laurel and his body hurt all over and also seemed oddly… undefended. He rippled his skin tentatively. His butt felt light.

It wasn’t the first time he’d felt both this achy and this vulnerable. The first time, he’d been human and also a teenager and also that had to be the least fun exit from circus life anybody had ever had and lived to tell about-- and which he nearly hadn’t. Repeated experience of the sensation hadn't made it suck any less. Clint whimpered. 

Turned out porcupines whimpered pretty good, so he did it again. It helped a little.

“Clint, where are you? It’s all right, they’re all… well…” Phil’s voice took on a slightly hysterical quality, along with the underlying off-note, “it wasn’t the neatest job any of us ever did, but it’s over. They’re all dead.”

Dead. Had a faceful of quills been enough to kill the guy Clint had fallen on, or had Phil finished him off? He’d had quills embedded in his eyes, Clint thought, and that was close to the… Clint decided not to think about it. 

Killing a man with your weaponized ass ought not to feel worse than killing a man your hands, and he’d done his fair share of that. Hell, time was it was his entire job. One of the benefits of SHIELD-- at least now that he was a field agent, not just a specialist-- was getting to do it less, but less wasn’t the same as not at all. So it shouldn’t feel different just because he was a porcupine, and shit, he was whimpering again. 

Maybe Phil would hear it this time?  

“Clint, you can come out now… Clint, come on. You’re… you need to be all right, Clint.” Phil’s voice was coming closer, but it kept sounding further gone. “You need to be all right, please, Clint. I don’t think either Natasha or I ever learned how to do first aid on a porcupine and we don’t have any bandages your size and we don’t have transportation and the extraction team won’t get here until near dawn and just, please, Clint, don’t be dead.”

Clint was not dead, but his heart sure felt like it was fixing to try and change that. He’d never been able to hear Phil in any kind of distress, however minor, without it leaping up into his throat to try and strangle him. It wasn’t always a useful reaction in their line of work, but he’d thought he’d gotten a handle on it. This felt worse than all the last times put together. Maybe it was because Clint was so much smaller. Or maybe it was that weird something in Phil’s voice.

He struggled again in his leafy cradle, trying to shake the branches hard enough to attract attention.

“Come on, Clint,” Phil tried again, pleading now, and Clint could hear scrambling. “If you’ll just say something, I’ll make sure no one at SHIELD ever even finds out you’ve been a porcupine. Even though that was the single most impressive takedown of an enemy operative I’ve ever seen. I mean, I knew you had a killer ass, I just never-- I never expected-- come on Clint, please be okay, I need you to be okay. Please. I need you.” He was starting to break down.

Clint couldn’t handle that. He knew he couldn’t handle that. He gave up and screamed.

The branches parted above him fairly quickly after that, and Clint was lifted up and out of them, towards Phil’s pale, blood-streaked, beaming face. 

“Oh thank god,” Phil said, turning him upright and cuddling him carefully to his chest, where his heavy jacket could protect him from a pointy accident, “oh thank god.” He stroked Clint carefully on his nose and shoulders. “You okay?” 

Clint nodded. 

He’d live. It was what Phil wanted, after all.

\---

The campfire popped, burning merrily within the little ring Natasha and Phil had made for it. Clint had tried nosing a rock or two over to help, only to be met with frustrated huffs by his teammates.

“You’re hurt,” Phil had said.

_ You’re a porcupine _ , Clint had heard-- although, all right, he was probably bruised too. And had maybe gotten stuck by a few of his own quills and lost some blood. But that had never stopped him as a human. If he’d been human, they’d have hiked out that night, even with the motorcycles out of commission. If he’d been human, they never would have been in the woods long enough for the remaining cultists to even set up an ambush.

If he’d been human… Clint glanced up at Phil and considered. If he’d been human, would Phil have been half as scared for him, after the fight? The fear in Phil’s voice-- and that was what the weird note had been that had nearly broken Clint’s heart-- still haunted him. 

Natasha broke off a piece of protein bar, startling Clint from his thoughts, and held it out to him. Clint took it carefully between his paws, sat back on his haunches, and started to nibble it, mumbling under his breath and feeling very sorry for himself. From across the fire ring, Phil choked back a laugh. 

Clint looked up, idly stuffing the last corner of protein bar in his cheeks. Phil was facing him across the fire, looking like his normal calm, if exhausted, self again. He was chewing a protein bar of his own, his water bottle pinned between his boots. Clint ambled over and reached for the bottle, contemplating the problem of hydration. 

“Clint, what are you--” Phil started as Clint pressed the bottle between his paws, trying not to squeeze so hard he punctured it. Clint considered it, tilted it a little more until it met his rodent lips, then sat back on his haunches and lifted. 

A few very wet, very unhappy moments later, Clint finally pawed the last of the water from his eyes and decided he’d miscalculated badly. Phil and Natasha were both behaving shamefully, roaring with laughter, and he seriously considered using his tail on them just a little tiny bit. Instead, he waddled over to Phil, poked his knee to get his attention, and started chattering at him angrily. 

Phil bit his lip, then covered his mouth with one big hand to keep laughter from escaping. Little  _ snrk snrks _ still made it past the barrier. Clint chattered harder. He was  _ done _ being a stupid cute animal. He might be a rodent but he was poky and fierce and he was still Clint Barton, Agent of SHIELD, codename Hawkeye, and he had maybe killed a man with the power of his prickly behind and he was so fucking tired of being  _ laughed at _ . Especially by people who were supposed to be  _ his _ people, goddamnit. 

At that moment, it didn’t matter that Phil couldn’t possibly understand, Clint was bound and determined to tell him just how much he was hurting and in rage, and maybe if he’d been human he’d have gone off to sulk instead but he wasn’t he was a goddamn porcupine and was it too much to ask for some fucking sympathy, especially from the guy who’d been so afraid for him just a few hours ago? How could he sound like  _ that _ and than laugh like this?

“Clint,” Phil said, sliding his hand off his face and reaching out, letting it hover in front of Clint like Clint was a skittish animal, “Clint, calm down. I’m sorry. We’re sorry. It’s just… just… we can’t… I mean, you’re a  _ porcupine _ , Clint. You’re a porcupine and you could have died, earlier. It’s kind of laugh or cry time, here.”

“Hey,” Natasha said, coming up behind Clint, “here.” She set down water in an overturned motorcycle helmet. Clint sniffed it suspiciously, but it just smelled like her. She hadn’t even used dead cultist helmet.

He felt his skin expand, his quills settle, and with a sigh he dipped his muzzle deep into the helmet and lapped up her peace offering. It tasted just a little of hair mousse and sweat. When he finished, he laid his paw on Phil’s knee again and nudged it, muttering at Phil to show he wanted one of Phil’s protein bars. He had the peanut butter chocolate kind, and after the way he’d just behaved the least he could do was share.

“What do you want?” Phil asked him, looking a little confused. “Should I get the ouija board?”

Clint shook his head and kept nuzzling up Phil’s thigh, going for the protein bar pocket. If he used the board, he’d just get the bar, and honestly the touch was kind of half the point at the moment. He pawed at the pocket in question, and felt Phil’s huff of comprehension.

“You’ve had one and a half already,” Phil told him. “Some of us who are human-shaped need our energy too; don’t get greedy.”

Clint tipped his head back and gave what he hoped was an endearing snuffle of longing. Phil’s face went twisty again.

“How are you doing that?” Phil asked him in a soft voice. “How is it possible that you’re even more irresistible when you’re an overgrown rodent than you are when you’re human?”

_ Irresistible _ ? Clint sat up and blinked.

“Uh,” Phil said. His eyes had gone wide, and he looked away quickly. “Uh, fine… here.” He dug out a protein bar and unwrapped it, frowning down at it as he did. Clint thought his hands might be shaking a little. “Here, I know that’s your favorite.” He thrust the bar at Clint. “I suppose being transformed into an animal really takes it out of you.”

Clint regarded the bar currently being pointed at his muzzle and considered.

Irresistible. Huh.  _ Even more _ irresistible, no less. Implying that Phil  _ usually _ found him irresistible, when Clint knew that was not a word that came up with nine out of every nine point five people you asked about his defining character traits. 

“Clint--” Phil started in a tone caught between wheedling and warning.

He was scared, now. Clint could smell it on him. Clint narrowed his eyes. He was remembering Phil babbling while trying to find him after the ambush. What had he said then? What? Ah. Yes. 

Maybe, Clint decided as he turned his tail on the protein bar and waddled over to his ouija board, maybe he’d been wrong all this time, when he thought Phil wasn’t interested in what Horny Clint thought about his ass. Also, maybe what he was about to do was a dumb idea, since he was currently a porcupine, not to mention that Phil had never said anything up till now. But it couldn’t hurt to try, could it? And Phil was already trying to bury it; if Clint waited ‘till he got back to human form he had a distinct feeling the scent was going to be gone.

He put his paw on the planchette, looked up at Phil, and waited. When Phil wouldn’t meet his eyes, Clint chittered.

Phil looked out into the woods.

Clint chittered louder.

Phil pulled at an imaginary thread on his chaps.

“Phil,” Natasha said gently, “I think Clint is trying to ask you something.”

Phil heaved a sigh, and looked over.

“Go ahead,” he said, “shoot.”

Clint got busy, nudging the board to the K, pausing until Phil mouthed the sound, moving it to the I, the L, jiggling it a little, the E, the R…. He paused to look up. Phil’d gone somewhat pale, but he nodded. Clint moved again, back to the A, then the S, then the S again. Then he sat back on his haunches, crossed his front paws over each other, tilted his head, and waited.

“Killer ass?” Natasha said faintly. Phil blushed, obvious even in the firelight.

“Well,” he said defensively, “you do. Is that all you want to ask, Clint?”

He was still hiding something. Clint looked back down at the ouija board, thinking furiously. Irresistible, killer ass… he jiggled the planchette. So Phil thought he was hot, why the hell was he so afraid of saying so? They’d been friends long enough he ought to know that wasn’t the kind of thing Clint was going to dump him over.

Clint got the planchette moving again.

U WR AFRAD he prompted Phil.

“Well of  _ course _ I was afraid,” Phil exploded, startling both Clint and Natasha. He stood, flinging his hands in the air. “Of course I was afraid, what the hell did you think?”

Clint felt his skin go tight as Phil’s voice rose, his quills starting to go up. He tried to smooth them down, to remind himself that Phil had never, would never, hurt him. It didn’t work, he didn’t have control over this stupid rodent body of his. If only he had fucking  _ hands _ , something to gentle Phil back down.

“Of course I was afraid,” Phil said, quieter now. “You nearly died, Clint. You… you turned into an animal and you nearly died saving me. Which is just you all over, you never did know when to stay out of a fight. But I get a right to be afraid. I get a right to be afraid, and… and maybe to lose it just a little bit, okay? I watch you do this every damn day, I’ve gotten as used to just ignoring it as I have your stupid face and your stupid gorgeous hands and… and your stupid creaky laugh. Most days, I can see you risk your life and not fall apart, but you’re… you’re a goddamn  _ porcupine _ , Clint, and you nearly died, and I think it’s excusable to be a little off your guard when someone you love does that, okay? I’m  _ sorry _ .”

That… had not been what Clint had expected. 

That had not been at  _ all _ what he’d expected. 

Irresistible, killer ass-- that hadn’t sounded like  _ love _ . 

But apparently love was there, too. Clint frowned down at the planchette, and at last began to push it around. He needed far more intel before he could respond, he decided.

Y U NO TEL B4

“Why didn’t I tell you before?” Phil shook his head. “Why  _ would _ I tell you?” 

Clint chittered at him indignantly. Phil winced, then walked over to the edge of the clearing to find a long stick. He began jabbing the fire violently. Natasha drew back from it, watching him cautiously, though as near as Clint could tell Phil had forgotten she was still there.

“Yeah I know, you have a right to know,” he said, sounding nearly angry about it. “And maybe I would have told you, if I’d only been interested in your killer ass, like you… like you… said.” Phil waved the end of the stick at the ouija board, and a spark bounced off it. Clint backed away. “That would’ve been easy. No heartburn there if you weren’t interested, too.”

True enough-- and exactly why Clint had risked asking him, current quilled state notwithstanding. He muttered something at Phil that he hoped served for both agreement and apology. He hadn’t intended to hurt Phil. His heart twisted again.

Phil gave him a rueful smile, then continued, all the anger bled out of him, leaving only resignation.

“Instead, I went and fell in love with you nearly the moment I met you, and the longer I knew you the worse it got. I know you won’t believe me, because I know  _ you _ , but you’re basically impossible to fall out of love with, Clint. You’re too smart to get bored of, too funny to stay mad at, too… too kind for me to ever feel unappreciated by you. But we’ve invested  _ so much _ in this team. And I’m… I’m not unware that for you and for Natasha it, well, it’d be a lot harder to find something else at SHIELD that used your talents than it would be to find somewhere else to stick me. I didn’t want to risk that for you… for us. Christ, if I’m being honest, I didn’t want to risk that for  _ me _ . But then you had to go and be a porcupine, and apparently I’m not in control of myself when you do things like that.”

“Damnit, Phil,” Natasha muttered. Luckily, she didn’t say anything more-- Clint didn’t think he could have stood any interruptions.

“Anyway,” Phil continued, “I’m aware the risks are high and the possible rewards are… I… I couldn’t blame you, even if you  _ were _ interested, even if that’s why you asked… I wouldn’t blame you for not wanting to risk a relationship with me. But at the same time now that I’ve told you, I can’t take it  _ back _ .”

He cracked the stick in two and flung it into the fire, then turned to look at Clint, his arms crossed, tension riding on his face. Clint fought not to respond to it, and was aware he was failing by the way his skin rippled, puffing out his fur and quills.

“I can transfer out, if you want,” Phil told him. “It’d take a little while, and I’ll have to think up something to tell Director Fury, but I can do it if we… end up being too uncomfortable to work together. Or.…” His heart was in his eyes when he looked at Clint, and Clint wondered how he’d never seen it hanging there before. “Or if you can think of something else, if you would, um, if you want to try something, since the cards are on the table anyway…. I warn you now, I’m not the world’s best romantic prospect, not that you don’t know that. I’ve never really  _ tried _ a relationship with someone I love; there’s probably a pretty steep learning curve. But. I would try, for you. Your choice. If you want me, here I am.”

Clint felt his paws tremble. Why had he asked? Stupid, stupid,  stupid. Why hadn’t he waited until he had his damned voice back to dig into it? He darted a despairing glance down at the ouija board. Hard enough to put his thoughts into order, without having to nose them all out on this damn… damn  _ thing _ . But he had asked, and Phil had broken and now he was waiting for an answer. Clint couldn’t leave Phil hanging. 

Clint reached out a paw, and then paused.

_ Love _ . God that was heavy, he felt it in the way his heart dragged, just like it did when….

Oh.

_ Idiot _ , Clint muttered at himself.  _ Fool _ . His heart hadn’t been twisting itself into knots whenever Phil looked the teensiest bit vulnerable all these years for no reason. 

He had to find  _ something _ to say, fast. He could order the rest of his thoughts later. The planchette was still resting over the 4 on the board. Clint nosed it down one line.

GOOD.

Phil looked at the board, looked back at Clint, and his face crumbled. 

“Oh,” he said. “Okay.” 

It was almost too small, too tight, to hear. Behind Clint, Natasha stirred.

Clint chittered nervously. It wasn’t the reaction he’d expected. Phil nodded, mostly to himself, scrunched his face up, and set his shoulders.

“I, uh, I get it. I’ll… when we get back, I can… I can talk to the Director. Look--” his voice choked. “Look, I’ll… I’ll be back.”

And with that he turned and practically raced out of the clearing and into the darkness.

What? What had just happened? Clint looked down at the board, then slewed around to look up at Natasha, who was fast covering the distance between them. She looked down.

“Oh,” she said, wincing. “Clint?” She pointed back at the board. 

Clint looked back, confused, and then his heart stopped.

Somehow, in all his haste, he hadn’t noticed just how close GOOD was to BYE. 

Maybe ouija boards really were evil.

Clint gave an impotent little wail, took a stumbling step forward, and fell splat across the board. Oh. Right. He was still a porcupine. Goddamnit, what a horrible time to be a rodent. If he’d been a man, he could have just stepped over that stupid board, run after Phil, taken him in his arms, wiped that cracked-open look off his face and replaced it with something better. 

Instead he was sprawled with his chin on the planchette as the man he loved disappeared further into the darkness.

Natasha got down on her elbows and rolled till she could look him in his face.

“I take it that’s not what you intended?” she asked.

Clint muttered at her, then pulled himself upright and nosed the planchette back up the board to NO. After a moment, he heaved a whole-body sigh, and nosed it a little further, till it was resting over the moon.

“Ah,” Natasha said, sounding as regretful as Clint felt. “That’s about how I’d thought you felt. Well, crap.”

YES, Clint said with a flick of the planchette. How the hell was he going to fix this? This kind of thing required an actual talk. He was game for batting things around on the board as long as it took to make himself clear, after the way he’d just fucked up, but even assuming he could haul the board off into the darkness, Phil wouldn’t be able to read it.

Natasha was clearly going through the same calculations as he was, because she bopped him on the muzzle and said:

“I hate to say this, but I think this misunderstanding had better wait until you have vocal chords again, Clint. Or at least a laser pointer. I’d offer to carry a message to Phil, but I don’t think it’s really that dire. He can’t run far until we’re home, and he  _ won’t _ run far after that. I’ll make sure of that for you. You two will sort it out.”

Clint poked at the planchette, slowly at first, then with increasing vigor, until it landed back on NO. He felt prickly in his skin-- hah-- in a way that he knew wasn’t going to stop until Phil wasn’t hurting anymore. He’d never felt okay when Phil was hurting (and he really should have realized he was in love long before this), and especially not when he’d caused it. 

“Well, it’s at least going to have to wait until morning,” Natasha said with infuriating reasonableness, “because if I were Phil I wouldn’t want to come back tonight until I were fairly certain I wouldn’t have to talk about this anymore. He’ll probably wait until you’re nested down and I’m ready for him to take first watch.” 

She was right, of course. Clint loved Phil, but he wasn’t blind; Phil’s tendency to go off and sulk while pretending to be stoic was old news. But morning felt too long to wait. Hell, right  _ now _ was too long to wait, with Phil out there in the darkness nursing his unexpectedly broken heart like a dumbass, when he could be here petting Clint on the nose and making plans. He whapped at the planchette again, spinning it around and around. 

And then he sat straight up and stared at it. 

He had his answer, right there under his paws all the time.

_ Stay here, _ he muttered at Natasha, emphasizing it by pointing his claw at the ground. 

“Clint?” Natasha asked, sitting up, “what are you planning on doing?”

Clint gathered the planchette up between his paws and held it to her. Without waiting for her response, he dropped it again, then started nudging it off the board and into the dirt around the bonfire, aiming in the direction Phil had gone.

\---

The planchette showed an unfortunate tendency to get stuck on every minor obstacle, so Clint spent as much time flipping it end over end as sliding it, and he mumbled curses at it as he went, in his high-pitched porcupine way. He knew Phil could hear him coming, shuffling and muttering, and could probably smell him, too. He just hoped Phil would stay wherever he was, unwilling to risk Clint finding nothing but empty forest at the end of his journey.

A few minutes proved that Clint had bet right; Phil was sitting on a log with his elbows on his knees and his back bent. He’d probably been staring off into the foliage, but he’d clearly heard Clint coming, because he was watching as Clint loped up. It was nearly full dark, the only light came from the moon and from the occasional firefly. It was enough for Clint’s porcupine eyes to see Phil clearly anyway, and he hoped it was enough for Phil to see him.

“Clint,” Phil sighed as Clint finally came up even with him. “I wish you hadn’t come out here.”

Clint muttered negations at him.

“I don’t understand what you’re trying to tell me,” Phil said. “And, to be honest, I really don’t want to talk right now. Just. I get that you’re worried, but right now I… I need a little space. Please. Give me that much.” 

Clint wasn’t going to give him any such thing, not with his voice sounding the way he did. He settled himself right in front of Phil and picked up the planchette, carefully turning it in his paws until the pointed tip of it faced downwards. Then he held it up.

“Um? That doesn’t really do any good without the board,” Phil told him. “Which I don’t see, and even if it were here, I couldn’t read.”

Phil, Clint decided, was perhaps a little slow. He huffed and tried again. This had to work. It  _ had _ to. There wasn’t another option. (Actually, there were probably several, including rubbing up against Phil’s leg until he got the right idea, but Clint wasn’t entirely confident in his control over his quills and skewering didn’t seem like a great idea at this juncture.)

“I… I’m really not sure?” Phil looked lost, and perhaps a little angry. 

Clint grumbled and stamped his back paw on the ground then held the planchette out and shook it. Phil just looked blank.

All right, one more try. Clint gathered the planchette to himself, trying his best to press it to his chest with elbows that didn’t bend quite right. He chittered and muttered and whined until Phil froze, really looking at him for the first time in their current conversation.

“What?” Phil asked, but his voice had gone soft again, so Clint figured maybe he was starting to get the idea.

Slowly, and with great emphasis, Clint moved the planchette away from his heart and held it up to Phil. When Phil didn’t move, he shuffled closer, praying his balance would last, until he was right up between Phil’s legs. And then he pressed the planchette against Phil’s chest, digging in until Phil could feel the full shape of it; the twin semicircles on the top tapering down to a point on the bottom. 

Phil looked down at his chest, then back at Clint, and his mouth dropped open in a helpless little O. 

“Clint?” he said, and his voice was wavering. “You…” He broke off, leaning back just far enough to reach down and take the heart-shaped planchette from Clint’s outstretched paws. He did so as solemnly as if he were receiving something infinitely precious. 

“You do?” He asked.

Clint mumbled in the affirmative, and let one paw drift down to rest on Phil’s knee. He stretched his muzzle up as high as he could get it, reaching up with his other paw to coax Phil down to him. When Phil was finally in reach, he brushed their noses together and then sank back down, his haunches aching.

“Oh,” Phil said. It was a much better  _ Oh _ than the one by the fire, a much happier one.

Clint burbled happily at his own ingenuity. Screw using his words, this would do fine. 

“Oh, my dear,” Phil said, and Clint felt all his tight skin loosen and ripple, smoothing down until he knew instinctively every quill was hidden under a thick coat of fur. 

He tested it out cautiously at first, rubbing against Phil’s leg, muttering little pleased noises when his quills stayed down. Well, look at him go, getting the hang of this porcupine thing at last. He rubbed harder, circling Phil’s legs like a cat. Phil started laughing again, but it was such relieved, helpless laughter that Clint didn’t have the heart to hate it. 

“I’m sorry,” Phil told him, “it’s really,  _ really _ hard to take you seriously when you’re a porcupine.”

Clint huffed at him, then licked his hand.

Phil started cackling.

“That sounds better, anyway,” Natasha said, and Clint looked up to find her nearly on top of them. 

“I’m sorry for the dramatics earlier,” Phil told her. She snorted.

“I’ve seen worse,” she said, and held out a long, dark shape. The ouija board. “I decided if Clint was determined to talk it out now, I’d probably better make sure you could actually understand each other.”

She passed the board to Phil, then followed it with a flashlight. 

“Thank you,” Phil said solemnly, and Clint barked agreement.

“Just don’t stay up past curfew,” she told them. “I need my beauty sleep. I also need to get back to the fire, so I’ll see you two later.”

Clint turned back to Phil and pawed at the planchette. Phil pulled the thing away, actually clutching it to his breast for a moment, before reluctantly holding it out.

Well fine, if Phil felt that strongly about it, he could keep it. Forever, if need be.

Clint found a rock instead, hovering it over the board until Phil had the full force of the flashlight shining down on it. Then he started to move it.

“U…” Phil sounded out as Clint chose his letters, “huh… ah… vuh. Kuh… ih… l… er… ah...ss.” 

The flashlight drooped as Phil snorted, and Clint whistled through his nostrils, hoping it sounded horny and not absurd. 

“Thank you,” Phil told him. “I’m glad it meets your approval.”

Clint started the rock moving again, this time a little more slowly, his gaze more focused on Phil than on his paws.

I LOV U 2

There was a light touch on his muzzle as Phil reached out to stroke it.

“I know. You told me that already,” he said fondly. 

It was drastically unfair, Clint decided, that he was currently a porcupine. Nearly as unfair as it was that Happy Phil apparently stopped his heart just as dead as Hurt Phil. He shook himself and went back to the board.

D8 

“Yes,” Phil told him. “Plural. Um… once you’re a human again, preferably. Though if that takes too long I’m willing to compromise, just as long as you understand you’re not getting to first base with quills on. You do need a laser pointer and board, though-- I don’t want to miss a single thing you have to tell me.”

Clint wondered if he could burst from all the happiness inside him; it had nearly nowhere to go and it seemed far too concentrated for his compact rodent form. He carefully reached out and placed the stone down one last time, then slammed his hind foot next to it, covering over the letters BYE.

GOOD, read the ouija board. 

\---

Five days later, Clint was finally released from R and D, blessedly human but unexpectedly pantsless. The researchers still weren’t sure what they’d done to the flat little artifact to make it leap up from the table, scatter light beams all over, and turn Clint from a porcupine to a man, but he wasn’t complaining. (They were, but now that they knew what they were looking for, Clint figured they could de-racoon their division director in fairly short order. And anyway, given that he’d gnawed through two chair legs and a hatstand they probably didn’t really want him around.)

Clint didn’t wait for anyone to bring him pants before he left, he just grabbed a nearby blanket and headed down SHIELD’s corridors, stopping only briefly to grab some breath mints from the nearest accessible desk. His back was smooth, his tail was gone, his teeth were no longer orange, and he was a man on a mission.

Phil looked around as Clint came into his office, and Clint vaguely noted that he looked entirely recovered from their cultish ordeal. He was in the bottom half of a suit, his jacket off and sleeves rolled up in a way that had long made Clint weak at the knees. He was even tieless. He was also, Clint noted in the second before he came even with Phil, holding a little heart-shaped planchette in his hand, and he had the fateful ouija board open on the desk in front of him.

How sweet. 

Then Clint was too close to see anything except the flutter of Phil’s eyelashes as Clint kissed him. His lips were warm and sure, and they sent a thrill through Clint’s entire body. It felt almost like raising his quills again, the way his skin tightened. 

“Mm,” Phil said, pulling back and looking Clint up and down. “R&D said you’d left. I thought you’d take longer to get here. Not that I’m complaining; you’re naked in my office. There’s a daydream come to life.” 

He got another kiss for his trouble, and Clint kicking the door shut before dropping the blanket. 

“I guess this means you don’t have any second thoughts, then.” 

Phil’s voice was light, so Clint just rolled his eyes then stepped back up to him and grabbed him around the waist, making sure Phil could see his whole face.

Then he grinned, trying to beam out every ounce of appreciation, joy, and love he had for Phil, everything he couldn’t make a rodent face carry. 

Phil met him look for look. 

They’d talked a lot over the past few days, or Phil had talked and Clint had used his head-mounted laser pointer on a custom-built predictive text tablet. It had been slow going, but good enough that they’d been able to at least get a start on the new-love chatter about who had felt what when and what happened next and what they hoped for and feared out of a relationship. They weren’t about to get physical while Clint was still wearing a quill suit, but neither of them had wanted to put the rest of it on hold. There had seemed to be infinite details to discuss, and Clint had thought he’d never get tired of talking about them.

He had been wrong; now that Clint finally had all his words back, he couldn’t find a single one.

“You ready for that date you promised me?” Phil asked, raising a hand to stroke Clint’s jawbone. 

Clint was indeed. He was ready for that date and the next date, and some sleepovers in between dates, and a whole long string of days and nights with Phil, spanning off into the distance. That was maybe getting ahead of themselves a little, though.

For now, Clint just nodded his head, winked at Phil, and burbled his affirmative, porcupine-style.

When Phil finally finished with the astonished laughter that burst from him, he laid his forehead against Clint’s.

“Glad to hear it,” he said. “And I love you, you nut.”

“Back at ya,” Clint told him, then pulled him in for another kiss.

It sure beat being a porcupine.

\---

END

**Author's Note:**

> I love, adore, and cherish your comments, and promise to squee over them at bleak 2 AMs. I've also got a [tumblr](http://kat-har.tumblr.com/) if asks or messages are your preferred feedback method.
> 
> Here, have a [porcupine eating a pumpkin](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cILZ_cB3_so).


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